About Us - Late for the Train History

David Dobrick, our founder, got his start in Specialty Coffee in the early 1980's working for Alfred Peet of Peet's Coffee & Tea. As a young clerk he was invited to a tasting at Peet's roasting facility in Emeryville and was forever transfixed with a passion to work in the coffee trade. He honed his interest in all things coffee a few years later while living in Cleveland, Ohio and working for Arabica Coffee & Tea.

In February of 1993 he opened our first espresso bar at 107 N. San Francisco Street. We are still pulling shots there! It is only about 600 square feet but it works great for the bustling downtown crowd. By 1996 we started roasting at our larger, second cafe at 1800 N. Fort Valley Road. To make things even busier we opened a bakery at the same site and began rolling out muffins, cookies and such. The roastery is currently located at 1071 E. Old Canyon Court, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001. We had to move our roaster out of the cafe due to it getting to hectic.

In those early years we had pies stacked on the counters, drinks pouring, and as many as a hundred burlap sacks of raw coffee throughout the cafe in place of chairs and tables. We don't know how we did it. We are also fortunate to have a kiosk in the lobby of Flagstaff Medical Center. David spent a couple of weeks in one of their ICU beds after a cycling accident several years ago. When an opportunity to open an espresso kiosk for the staff and patrons at FMC through an open bid he jumped at the opportunity. We continue to proudly serve the doctors, staff and guests of FMC.

Much has changed over the years but our founding mission to "Brew Community in a World Class Cup" has not wavered. Our three locations are supported by a first rate Roasting facility here in Flagstaff at 1071 E. Old Canyon Court. We have upgraded from our American made Diedrich IR-20 to a CR-50 roaster with automation controls for profiling (recipe roasting). We are beginning to take on more wholesale roasting and look forward one day to partnering with distributors so that our freshly roasted coffee can be in the cups of people beyond Flagstaff, Arizona.

Since the Fall of '09 we have been packaging our coffee beans in 10oz. custom printed steel cans. One day while researching on the web, David came onto some research that showed the benefits of preserving coffee's freshness by using steel cans with new one-way degassing valve technology. Further research revealed numerous other benefits; the cans always look great in the stores and they have great promise for lowering our carbon footprint by not only being made of 25% recycled steel, but being 100% recyclable. More importantly, they can be reused for decades as containers for coins, art supplies, screws and such. We also offer people discounts on refills of our freshly roasted coffee when they bring in one of our cans.